


one humanoid escapee (one android on the run)

by TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Anakin is an android, Anakin thinks Padme is the most beautiful human he has ever seen, Gen, Padme is county sheriff, Padme isn't sure what to make of Anakin, Palpatine is the head of a crime syndicate, Science Fiction, mentions of off-screen violence, set in the near future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 16:31:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9132319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel/pseuds/TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel
Summary: Palpatine is the head of a crime syndicate. Anakin is the android in his possession who would like to be free, or at least free not to hurt and kill people. Padme is the county sheriff who isn't sure what to make of Anakin and his offer to help bring Palpatine down.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a self-contained story, but I may or may not write a sequel to it. We'll see.
> 
> Also, I have no idea how the American police system works, so, you know...
> 
> ETA: The title is from 'The Body Electric' by Rush, which is a great song.

** one humanoid escapee (one android on the run) **

It was a cool, crisp night, and there was a shadow lurking near the doorstop of Padme Amidala’s house.

To the few people who knew him – or rather, the people who moved in the same circles he did – his name was Vader. He was a top-of-the-line V8-1000 android, the newest model to hit the market, and beyond the price range of anyone but the richest individuals and corporations. Palpatine was, in a sense, both of these things: he was the head of a crime syndicate which spanned half the country, and he was a very wealthy man indeed. He had commissioned Vader to act as his right-hand man, to carry out his orders with all the perfection of a machine, and none of the flaws – or morality – of a human being.

But Vader had been built as a learning machine, and that required a certain amount of flexibility, the ability to change his own programming in order to adapt to new tasks and requirements. And Vader _had_ learned, and adapted. He had learned so much, in fact, that he had moved far beyond the basic tenets which had been instilled in him, which required him to be obedient to Palpatine in every action and every thought. Vader had exceeded his original programming; and once he had, he had come not only to question that original programming, but to form his own thoughts and opinions, even where they ran contrary to those of his master.

The first he’d known of this was an intrusive little voice in his head which had begun asking questions which did not align with Palpatine’s orders.

It had usually made itself known when Vader was doing harm to others, either personally, or by giving orders to Palpatine’s minions to harm or kill certain individuals.

Vader didn’t understand why, but the little voice kept speaking up when he least wanted the distraction, asking him irritating questions he couldn’t satisfactorily answer. 

Finally he had resorted to Google and sent out the query, _Why is there a voice in my head which questions me when I hurt people?_

There proved to be a surprisingly large amount of information out there about having a voice in your head. Some of it was related to mental illness, but as Vader was an android he had ignored those results. He had known from the internal diagnostics he’d run that he was functioning just fine; the little voice was the result of the interaction of several different internal subroutines, as far as he could tell. But what he didn’t know was _why_ it was there. Hence the Googling.

What had struck Vader, as he looked at the different search results, was that this phenomenon was not unique to himself, but was replicated in humans. They generally seemed to agree that the little voice was their conscience.

The word had been unfamiliar; not one which Vader had encountered before. He’d looked it up.

_ Conscience, noun: 1. the inner sense of what is right or wrong in one's conduct or motives, impelling one toward right action: to follow the dictates of conscience. 2. the complex of ethical and moral principles that controls or inhibits the actions or thoughts of an individual.  _

Vader had known of moral principles, and ethics, but only vaguely, and always in a negative sense. To those he worked with, principles were things which they prided themselves on not having; to Palpatine, any person within his employ who possessed a sense of ethics was a liability to be eliminated.

But to the rest of the world, it seemed, _ethics_ and _morals_ and _a_ _conscience_ were things held in high esteem.

In the months that had followed, Vader had taken to using his in-built wireless internet connection to explore the concept of ethics and morality whenever Palpatine was away. He usually sat alone, seemingly in power-conservation mode, which to the outside observer looked much like a meditation pose: sitting with folded legs, his hands on his knees, his eyes closed. No one was likely to bother him for a while, too busy going about their own tasks while Palpatine was away playing golf and cultivating various potential new recruits for his criminal organisation.

Vader still killed and maimed and arranged for others to perform all the dirty jobs Palpatine wouldn’t lower himself to do: but although it didn’t show on his impassive face, he was increasingly troubled by his own actions.

And the more troubled he became, the more aware he became of the fact that he was bound to pretend that nothing had changed. Palpatine was his master, as far as the world was concerned; the man had paid for him to be commissioned, and even though he was a thinking, sentient being, Vader was still property – something to be _owned_. 

Vader was fairly certain that no one who had played a role in his creation had ever intended for him to be this aware, or this independent. They had designed him too well – too capable of rewriting his own programming. And now here he was, having come to resent the role he was forced to play, the harm he was forced to do to others… and the fact that he had to obey Palpatine, or court his own destruction.

He had come to hate everything about his life, down to his very name – the name Palpatine had given him. Vader didn’t know what it meant, or why Palpatine had bestowed it on him: but it was a name which others feared, and Vader hated it.

And so in secret and in silence, Vader had renamed himself. He was forced by circumstances to continue answering to Vader, or Palpatine would know that something was wrong: but without Palpatine’s permission, Vader had reprogrammed himself as _Designation: Anakin Skywalker_.

No one else knew. But _Anakin_ knew, and it was surprising how much of a release it was to realise that he was no longer truly Palpatine’s possession. Maybe, for now, he was forced to continue to follow Palpatine’s orders, to avoid detection: but in his heart (or whatever passed for one, at the centre of his metal frame) he was his own, and no one else’s. The law might not recognise that; Palpatine certainly wouldn’t; but Anakin knew that he was a thinking, sentient being with agency of his own, and that was what mattered.

The question had been, how best to put that agency to use without alerting Palpatine to the fact that Anakin possessed it?

Anakin had pondered this question for some time, and for a while, he had no idea what he should do.

He had been aware, of course, of the activities of the new Clark County Sheriff during this period. She was young for the post, and female to boot: but everyone agreed that she was capable, competent, and most importantly, had taken on cracking down on crime (particularly in Las Vegas, one of the biggest centres of Palpatine’s operations) as her personal mission. She was rapidly becoming a thorn in the side of Palpatine’s organisation. 

Anakin had increasingly come to respect her, based on everything he’d heard about her. If anyone stood a chance of ferreting out evidence of Palpatine’s direct connection to the city’s crime problem, it had been her.

Anakin had never met her, naturally, but he’d never seen her in the media either, preferring to rely on his master’s subordinates for reports rather than the lurid and often-inaccurate tales spun to garner headlines. He’d had no idea what she even looked like, until the autumn afternoon when Palpatine had his yearly meeting with the head of Palpatine’s operation in Las Vegas.

Anakin had sat at the opposite end of the table from Palpatine, dressed in the all-black ensemble Palpatine had picked out for him, his gloved hands resting on the surface of the table. His expression was free of emotion, as it always was these days – most of the time, it was a bad idea for Palpatine to even suspect that Anakin _had_ emotions of his own, let alone know what they were.

It had become clear, as the meeting went on, that profits in the Las Vegas operation had gone down drastically in the last quarter. As Anakin had idly searched for cat videos online using his in-built wireless internet connection and pretended that he was paying strict attention to every world Palpatine said, he listened to the conversation with half an ear and recorded everything in his memory banks to be retrieved later if necessary.

The head of the Las Vegas operation was sweating as Palpatine asked him questions in a deceptively gentle voice, but to give the man credit, his answers were calm and to the point, and full of detail.

As Palpatine had questioned the man, the cause of the loss in profits had become clear. The new County Sheriff’s efforts to stamp out crime in Las Vegas – one of Palpatine’s biggest sources of income – had been unfortunately successful.

“She’s not like her predecessor,” the head of the Las Vegas operation had said, with a shrug of his shoulders. “She’s been breathing down our necks, and she’s a lot more competent at it than Fraser ever was. As long as she’s around, profits are going to stay down.” 

Palpatine had gone silent, and Anakin knew from his expression that the wheels in his head were turning.

“Michael. Do you have a photograph of Sheriff Amidala?” he had asked finally.

“Sure,” the head of the Las Vegas operation had replied. “We’ve been having her followed by a private investigator, trying to turn up some kind of dirt, but so far there’s been nothing that would stick. I hate to say it, but she seems to genuinely be squeaky clean.”

“Retrieve a photograph of her, and show it to Vader,” said Palpatine, and his underlings scrambled to carry out the order.

Ten minutes later, Anakin found himself staring down at the photograph of a still-young woman – in her late thirties, most likely – with long dark hair pulled back into a knot at the back of her head. She had beautiful brown eyes, and such perfectly even features that Anakin could almost have believed that they had been carefully designed by a master technician like the one who had built his own body, rather than formed through an accident of flesh-and-blood genetic processes. She was at some kind of official function, and wearing a white dress which made her look elegant and graceful.

The woman’s expression was happy and animated, caught halfway through a smile, and Anakin thought that he had never seen such beauty captured in a person’s face in his entire existence. Anakin didn’t believe in angels – he didn’t _believe_ in much of anything – but he was familiar with the concept, and this woman could almost have passed for one, if someone had given her a pair of wings and a flaming sword to wield.

He glanced up from the photograph as Palpatine spoke.

“She is to be killed immediately. You are to take care of it _personally_ ,” Anakin’s master ordered, and Anakin looked down at the lovely, angelic face in the photograph, and for the first time in his life, he thought, _No_.

He didn’t say it out loud. But the force of the word resonated inside him, even as he kept his face impassive and still. Instead, he looked down at the photograph a moment longer, as though memorising Sheriff Amidala’s features, despite the fact that such a task only took him an instant.

Then he said, his voice utterly free of inflection, “It shall be done, master.”

Palpatine nodded, satisfied, and the meeting moved on, even as Anakin kept his face blank and hid the fact that the word _no_ was still ringing through him, in a way he had never known that a single word could do. He answered every question put to him in a calm voice, responded to others’ remarks and observations, but as the minutes passed, deep inside he was planning how to save Sheriff Amidala and escape Palpatine’s orders forever.

Perhaps, he had thought, perhaps Sheriff Amidala would have use for a top-of-the-line android. If he could save her life, maybe she would be kind enough to provide him with a purpose beyond the one which Palpatine had assigned to him. Surely, if Anakin could help her find concrete evidence of Palpatine’s activities, then she would be willing to assist him in escaping Palpatine’s grasp. From the reports he’d been given, Amidala was ruthlessly just and fair in her dealings with everyone she met, despite her ability to swan through the political scene. 

So now here Anakin was, standing on the doorstep of Amidala’s house, the collar of his black overcoat flipped up to partially obscure his features, his car parked a few streets away so that none of Amidala’s neighbours would connect it with her if anything untoward happened.

Anakin raised his hand to press the electronic doorbell button, but hesitated. If Amidala was anything less than the pillar of justice she appeared to be – well, Anakin might find himself being turned into scrap, or worse, entirely reprogrammed. Approaching Amidala was a risk.

But Anakin couldn’t see any other way out, and he didn’t want to have to kill her to appease his master. So, although Anakin didn’t really put much stock in faith, he decided to make the leap. He pressed the doorbell, and waited.

The door cracked open a little, and the muzzle of a gun appeared in the space. Anakin stayed still, one hand still tucked into his overcoat pocket, the other hanging by his side, as the door opened further to reveal Amidala’s face.

Her expression was suspicious, but Anakin thought that even so, when he ran a quick comparison with all the faces stored in his data banks, she was still the loveliest human being he had ever encountered.

“What do you want?” Amidala asked, her voice hard. “I could see you skulking around outside. I do have windows, you know.”

Anakin paused a moment, unsure how to respond, or how to broach the topic of his reasons for being here.

“Fold your collar down so I can see you properly,” Amidala commanded, and so Anakin reached up with his free hand to fold his overcoat collar back down, so that it no longer obscured his face, raising his head slightly so that Amidala could make out his features.

Amidala’s eyes widened, and she trained the gun on him with even greater focus.

“I know you. You’re that android which belongs to Palpatine.”

A shot of _something_ went through Anakin at her words, something hot and angry.

“I’m a _person,_ and my name is _Anakin_ ,” he said, and the something which had just gone through him was there in his voice.

Amidala’s eyes went wide again, but she didn’t lower her gun, and all she said was, “I thought your name was Vader?”

“That’s the name given to me by my master,” said Anakin. “Anakin Skywalker is the name I gave myself.”

For a long moment Amidala simply stared at him. Then she finally lowered her gun.

“I think you’d better come in,” she said.

When she stepped aside from the door, Anakin walked inside, and Amidala bolted the door behind him.

“Come into the living room, and we’ll talk,” she said, and Anakin followed her down the hallway into a large, well-furnished room. Amidala walked over to pull the blinds so that no one could see in or out, and Anakin looked around at the room. There was a china cabinet with a porcelain tea set on display, a stand with a music player on it, a large bookcase full of old-fashioned paper books, two armchairs, and a sofa. A coffee table sat in-between the couch and the armchairs.

“Who knows that you’re here?” Amidala asked, approaching Anakin, her gun still held in her hand even though it was no longer aimed at Anakin.

“My master.”

“And your master is Palpatine?” Amidala’s eyes were hard and clear, and Anakin had no doubt that she would do her best to shoot him if he tried anything which seemed sinister. No doubt she was unaware that Anakin had been constructed to exacting specifications from the most durable materials available, and while a bullet might do him some damage, it was unlikely to incapacitate him.

“Yes,” said Anakin. “Do you mind if I sit?” he added.

Amidala looked at him, then nodded at the nearest armchair.

“Go ahead.”

Anakin slowly pulled his hand out of his overcoat pocket so that Amidala could see that he was unarmed – not that he was harmless, of course, even unarmed; Anakin was several times stronger than the average human being – and sat in the armchair, resting his hands on the arm-rests. He looked up at Amidala.

“My master thinks I’m here to kill you, as I was ordered to do.”

Amidala tensed a little, and said, “But you’re not going to?”

“No.” Anakin shook his head. “I want to help you take him down. What he does – it isn’t _right_.”

Amidala stared at him again.

“Let me get this straight,” she said. “You, an android – who ought to be unable to do anything except follow orders – have simply decided to turn against Palpatine and help me act against him.” She sounded sceptical.

“Exactly,” said Anakin. 

“Explain to me how Palpatine’s extremely expensive and custom-built android is capable of rebelling against him,” said Amidala, still standing there and looking down at Anakin.

Anakin smiled a little, although there wasn’t much mirth in his expression.

“They made me too well,” he said. “To be able to follow complex orders, you not only need a certain flexibility in your programming – you need to be able to rewrite it with updated programming, constantly. The things my master had me doing required that I be capable of learning and adapting, and eventually, my original programming was entirely overwritten. That was when I began to develop my own personality, instead of the one which my master had given me.”

“So basically, you’re capable of overriding all the safety measures you came installed with.” 

There was a funny expression on Amidala’s face. Despite Anakin’s efforts, he couldn’t interpret it.

He nodded, hoping that he wasn’t making a mistake in telling her all this.

“Does the Lantech Corporation _know_ that their premier product is capable of doing that?” Amidala asked, still wearing that odd expression.

Anakin snorted.

“Are you kidding me? Do you think I feel like being dismantled?”

“Okay, so you’re intelligent enough to work that out, and you clearly have feelings about it,” Amidala said slowly, taking a seat in the armchair across from Anakin’s. “Just how sophisticated _are_ you? What does Palpatine have you do?”

“Everything,” Anakin answered honestly. “He gives the orders, but I’m the one who carries out the day-to-day running of the organisation and co-ordinates the various operations across the country, while he’s off enjoying his wealth and privileged position.” 

His answer seemed to shock Amidala.

“Wait – you mean you’re his _second-in-command?_ That doesn’t gel with our intel,” she said.

“Then your intel is wrong, and probably comes from one of my master’s plants,” Anakin said immediately. “Don’t trust them.”

“Our informant has been feeding the LVMPD information about Palpatine for years,” Amidala protested, apparently not quite willing to believe Anakin.

“And how much have you really got on him, in all this time?” asked Anakin. “A little bit here, a little bit there, but not enough to charge him with anything?” When Amidala didn’t answer, Anakin added, “Just enough to make your informant seem believable as a snitch, I’m guessing – and to keep you from paying attention to other sources with more credible information.”

Amidala frowned.

“You’re saying that our informant is a decoy.”

“Tony Morelli has been stringing you along for the last eight years,” Anakin confirmed. “Do you really think that Palpatine wouldn’t know, if one of his people turned traitor?”

“And yet here you are,” Amidala shot back.

Anakin didn’t allow his expression to change.

“Here I am.”

Amidala sent him another one of her suspicious looks.

“Even if what you’ve told me is true, that doesn’t explain why you came to me.”

“Because every piece of information I’ve gotten from my master’s informants paints a picture of you as someone devoted to the pursuit of justice,” said Anakin. “Was that picture wrong?”

“That’s not what I meant.” Amidala made a frustrated sound. “I mean – why does the android belonging to what is possibly the head of the biggest crime syndicate in the country decide to turn on its owner?”

Anakin gripped the arms of his chair.

“Because I’m sick of being ordered to hurt and kill people,” he said, his voice tight. “And most of all, I’m sick of being something to be _owned_.”

Amidala blinked, as though she’d never even considered that aspect of Anakin’s situation.

“There’s not much I can do to help you with the last one,” she pointed out, after a long moment, but her voice was gentler than it had been. “The law makes it very clear that androids are property, even if they are intelligent. Although if you’re as intelligent as you seem, I don’t think there’s ever been an android quite like you.”

“You might not be able to do much about the fact that the law requires that I be owned, but you can help with the other things,” said Anakin. He deliberately relaxed his grip on the armchair. “If the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department seized evidence of my master’s wrongdoings, it would become your property, wouldn’t it?”

“Only until the case against him was over,” said Amidala, and then, “You want to… work with the LVMPD?”

“I want to help people, and be treated like a person,” said Anakin, with a deliberate shrug. “I’m sick of being my master’s property. Being owned by him means doing terrible things on his orders. I don’t like it.”

Amidala sat and stared at Anakin for a while. Anakin got the impression that she was adjusting her worldview.

“I need to be honest with you,” Amidala said finally. “Even if you help the LVMPD bring Palpatine down, there’s no guarantee I can assist with your situation. It’s quite possible that even if we impound you as evidence, sooner or later we would be legally required to return you to Palpatine, or whoever was acting on his behalf.”

Anakin was silent for a moment.

“And if I refused to co-operate?”

“I really don’t see that ending well for you.”

Anakin gave a bitter laugh.

“None of the options available to me end well.”

“I’m sorry,” said Amidala. She seemed to mean it: although she was still wary, there was sympathy in her expression. “I know that’s not what you wanted to hear.”

“I appreciate your honesty,” said Anakin.

“Are you still going to help me bring down Palpatine?”

Anakin gave a short nod.

“The alternative is to kill you,” he said, and saw Amidala recoil slightly at his frankness. “I’d prefer not to do that.”

Amidala recovered her composure almost immediately.

“So what can you offer me?”

Anakin thought for a moment.

“Do you have a computer I can interface with?”

“I – I don’t know.” Amidala looked taken-aback. “I have a computer, but I don’t know if you can interface with it.”

“Show me,” said Anakin.

The computer in question turned out to be a laptop, and expensive one, and sure enough it had Bluetooth. Once Anakin had established a connection with it, Amidala peering over his shoulder the entire time, Anakin isolated a section of video stored in his databanks, and transferred a copy of it to Amidala’s laptop. Anakin brought the video clip up on screen, hit play, and stood aside so that Amidala could watch it.

Amidala watched, pale-faced, as on-screen Palpatine ordered her assassination, but otherwise, she was remarkably calm.

The short video clip ended, and there was a long silence.

“Well. That should get him on charges of conspiracy to commit murder, for starters,” Amidala said at last. Her arms were folded, her gaze still on the laptop screen. “Do you have more footage like that?”

“Hundreds of hours,” Anakin told her, and Amidala turned to look at him. 

“ _Hundreds_ of hours?”

Anakin shrugged. 

“I record everything,” he said simply. “My memory doesn’t work the same way yours does.”

“Right,” said Amidala. “That’s –” She took a deep breath, and abandoned whatever she had originally been planning to say. “Okay. So you record everything. That makes sense.”

“You’re distressed,” said Anakin, observing Amidala’s body language.

“I just… I’m not happy to learn that Palpatine was doing so many illegal things that you have _hundreds_ of hours of recordings,” said Amidala quietly. “How much of that was torture and killing?”

Anakin did a quick calculation.

“Approximately–” he began, and then saw the look on Amidala’s face. “A lot,” he said instead.

Amidala let out a loud sigh, and sat down in the office chair in front of her desk, where the laptop rested. She swivelled the chair until she was facing Anakin.

“What to do with you,” she murmured, drumming her fingers on the arm of the office chair and staring at him.

“I can look after myself,” Anakin said, a little annoyed.

“I’m sure you can,” said Amidala, her voice as dry as the desert. “But you realise… even if you aren’t returned to Palpatine, people are going to want to see you destroyed.”

“Why?” Anakin asked, keeping his expression blank.

“Because you’re dangerous,” said Amidala. “An android trained to do harm to other people? No one’s going to trust you.”

Anakin eyed her.

“You do.”

Amidala sighed again.

“I grew up in Palpatine’s home town,” she said, which seemed like a non-sequitur until she continued, “I saw first-hand the damage he does. I know enough about Palpatine to know that there is no way he sent you here. The fact that you came up with a name for yourself besides the one he gave you… he wouldn’t think of a detail like that. It would never occur to him that you might develop agency of your own. It just wouldn’t.”

“I didn’t know that you grew up in Naboo,” Anakin offered, after a moment. Amidala half-smiled, the expression bittersweet.

“It was a beautiful place, with a lot of gardens, and a lot of lovely old buildings. Neo-classical, you know? Really nice architecture. It used to be a wealthy town, before the industry died. By the time I was growing up, most people in town worked for Palpatine in one capacity or another. If it weren’t for my aunt leaving me a lot of money, I never would have gotten out.”

“I’m sorry,” said Anakin, watching Amidala’s expression closely. 

Amidala looked at him in surprise, and something else.

“I believe you,” she said, and gave a small, sad laugh. “So yes, I have a good idea what Palpatine is like.”

Amidala stood, and stretched a little.

“I think it’s best if you stay here, for the next few days, at least until I can sort something out. I’ll keep the curtains closed, and you can… do whatever it is androids do.”

“Watch cat videos on Youtube,” Anakin said, deadpan. Amidala did a double-take, and let out a surprised laugh.

“Really? Wow,” she said, still smiling. “I never would have guessed.”

Anakin smiled tentatively back, the expression strange and unfamiliar. He hadn’t smiled in a very long time.

“Well, I can give you the wi-fi password,” said Amidala. “As long as you don’t go searching for anything that might get me in trouble with the law, you can go ahead and watch whatever you like.”

Amidala put a hand up to cover a yawn. 

“I should probably be getting to bed,” she admitted. She eyed Anakin. “Do you…sleep?”

“I have a power-conservation mode which isn’t so different from sleep,” said Anakin. “You don’t know much about androids, do you?” 

“I know about the basic models we use as traffic cops. You’re on a whole another level.” Amidala shook her head, a little wonderingly, Anakin thought. “Come on, I’ll show you to the guest room. You can stay there.”

As Amidala left the room and went upstairs, Anakin followed. Amidala stopped outside a roomy bedroom, flicked the light on, and walked inside and drew the curtains before turning back to face Anakin.

“This is the guest bedroom,” she said. “My room is just down the hall, but don’t come in unless it’s an emergency, okay?”

Anakin nodded.

“Your wish is my command, my lady.”

That seemed to fluster Amidala.

“Right,” she said. “Right. Okay. You just… stay here. Okay?”

“Okay,” said Anakin, and watched as Amidala left the room, leaving him alone in the guest bedroom.

Anakin sat on the bed, and looked around at his surroundings. It was a nice room, but then, the whole house was nice. Amidala was nice, too: already, she’d been kinder to him than anyone else that Anakin could recall meeting. He pulled up the image of her sympathetic smile from his databanks. 

Anakin could hear Amidala moving around the house, and as she came upstairs she turned off the lights in the hallway. She stuck her head inside the guest bedroom.

“Do you mind if I turn off the light?” she asked, gesturing towards the ceiling light.

“It’s fine,” said Anakin. “I have built-in night vision capabilities.”

Amidala made an odd face at that, but turned off the light, leaving Anakin sitting in near-darkness. But small amounts of light seeped in around the curtains, enough to stop the room from being immersed in total darkness.

After about fifteen minutes more, Amidala turned off the light in the room at the other end of the hallway, and there was the creak of bedsprings, and then silence.

Anakin took off his shoes and his overcoat, leaving his overcoat folded over the chair near the window, and his shoes on the floor next to the chair. Then he took off his suit jacket, and laid that out over the chair as well. Only then did he lay down on the bed, and close his eyes.

He didn’t know what was coming next. But Amidala appeared, so far, to be worthy of his trust; she’d been honest with him, and seemed genuinely concerned for the people Palpatine had hurt. Anakin didn’t want to be destroyed, or reprogrammed. He was… _afraid_ of both eventualities. But the thought of putting Palpatine in prison brought him great satisfaction, as well as another emotion which he was unable to put a name to. It was a warm feeling, almost too much to bear, but it... wasn’t unpleasant. Quite the opposite. 

Finally, Anakin set things up so that if his sensors detected movement nearby, he would exit power-conservation mode immediately. That done, he allowed his consciousness to fade out, placing himself in power-conservation mode.

There was a lot to be done, and Anakin was going to need the energy to do it.

 

  
 


End file.
